Writing of books – escaping from reality or just using it?

As far as I know, the common opinion about being an actor, physician, writer is that you are not obliged to be at least a little crazy, peculiar and strange to be one, but it helps a lot… There are many evidences about this “rule”: while Miguel de Cervantes was writing his Don Quixote, he wasn’t interested in anything else but writing. He was so far away from reality that he wasn’t impressed a bit about his spoiled daughter’s behavior or his wife’s threats for divorce if he wouldn’t do anything for his family. As far as I remember, J. Adams used to get naked while writing some of his Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’s stories (probably that way his mood would be the right for his funny stories). While writing, Umberto Eco surrounds himself with all sorts of small figures of ancient people to feel better the spirit of the time he’s writing about…
There are many similar events of the kind I guess, which prove how important it is to use one’s imagination while writing, but when the matter at hand is ignoring the reality creating a story, I would say: Quite the contrary! Even the most abstract sci-fi and fantasy books require a lot of the real life’s wisdom, or its “boring”, “dull” and “meaningless” details, which with a little imagination could be turned into an inspiring, wise or even funny adventure, novel, etc. So, only the one who never wrote a story would claim writing has nothing to do with reality and to create a good manuscript every writer have to forget the every day’s events, mishaps, joys, etc. For example, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was actually a parody of the political intrigues and stupidity and strivings for power at any cost of England’s high society from the author’s time, and because of this combining of fiction and reality I guess it’s still one of the classics. J. R. Tolkien also used some facts about animals, plants, which made his The Lord Of The Rings more real (remember that Frodo wasn’t killed by the giant spider Shelob’s sting but just paralyzed?).
Of course all these speculations are true for every writer, not only for the most famous (writing is a process that’s not much different, no matter how different the genre an author writes is). Thinking about that, I realized I used a lot of my biological knowledge to create many of my animal characters and their adventures, I used also some political debates, some philosophical thoughts/speculations from our time, etc…
I’m more than certain every writer could share similar experiences?
http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TaleOfTheRockPieces.html, http://allanbard.hit.bg, http://allanbard.hpage.com, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Allan-Bard-Ivan-Stoikov-Fan-Page-Strategic-Book-Group/121092637984053,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yw3a5n00FI, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUA8Avl7ew, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ijJl-6Be88, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkixN9Nr2Q - pigeons, www.allanbard.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=263533&id=100000137216974#!/video/video.php?v=1297361605743,
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/ivanstoikov.allanbard, http:// www.allanbard.blogspot.com, www.allanbard.wordpress.com